Many foods such as seafood, meats and vegetables are prepared by first coating the food with a batter consisting essentially of flour, milk, eggs and seasoning. The batter coated food is then typically breaded with a light coating of flour and/or breadcrumbs and then fried by pan frying or deep fat frying. The fried batter coated food is enjoyed by consumers because the coating has a golden brown color and a soft crunchy texture that separates from the meat during eating resulting in a very tasty, greasy mouth feel. However, consumers also typically prefer the ease and simplicity of conventional baking as an alternative to frying. The messiness involved with the preparation of fried foods, the ever present danger of spattering oil, and the unfavorable dietary aspects associated with fried foods have led to the development of coatings which attempt to impart a fried appearance to foodstuffs which are baked and yet retain the appealing color, taste and texture associated with fried foods.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,496,601 to Rispoli et al. and 4,208,442 to Evans et al. disclose dry coating formulations which are useful to provide a fried appearance, taste and texture to baked comestibles. While each of these patents represents an advance in the art, they do not disclose a dry coating composition that imparts the appearance, texture and taste of batter fried comestibles to oven baked comestibles. Rispoli et al. discloses the use of a pre-fried batter component, which is flour-based being 10 to 50% by weight of the composition, a bread crumb component being from 17 to 35% of the composition, a starch component being from 10 to 30% of the composition and a film forming agent being from 1.5 to 30% of the composition. The film forming agent may be a protein such as gelatin or egg albumin.
Evans et al. discloses a dry coating composition having 60 to 78% of bulking agents which includes bread crumbs or cereal fines, a protein such as egg albumin or gelatin or other proteins, and flour. The composition also includes from 4 to 13% binding agents such as starch or dextrin. The Evans composition is made by first preparing a premix that includes all of the flour, a portion of the protein and a portion of the binding agents, mixing these ingredients, hydrating them and drying them. The premix makes up from 10 to 78% of the dry composition together with the remainder of the binding agents, protein and bulking agents. In the Evans et al. composition, it is critical that only a portion of the protein is included in the premix for the stated reason that if it is dry blended into their dry coating composition, an apparent gummy and powdery mouth feel as well as substantial reduction in uniformity and crispness occurs.